Thursday, December 10, 2009

As he took over Europe and slaughtered millions, there was only one thing Hitler feared... going to the dentist!

From the Daily Mail, always has some sort of articles about Hitler.He has gone down as one of the world's bloodiest dictators, responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people. Adolf Hitler portrayed himself as a fearless ruler who was afraid of no-one. But behind closed doors, the Nazi leader was terrified of one thing - going to the dentist. His personal dentist Johannes Blaschke revealed how Hitler once insisted simple root-canal work was spread over eight days because he 'couldn't stand the pain.' Hitler also had 'terribly bad breath, abscesses and gum disease', a new book about Blaschke claims. The book, entitled 'Dentist of the Devil' by Menevse Deprem-Hennen, she chronicles the work of Blaschke, who was in charge of the Fuehrer's gnashers for nearly 20 years. Two months ago another book about Hitler's general state of health suggested, without any documentary proof, that Hitler had fillings in his mouth made from the gold teeth of extermination camp victims. But the records of Blaschke show no such gold was used on him although he did use it on SS men in his care. Deprem-Hennen accessed Blaschke's hitherto unseen medical files on Hitler and other leading Nazis who were his patients in the 1930s and 40s. 'Everyone who knew something about the status of Hitler's teeth was of supreme interest to the Allies after the war because of the few remains of his skull and jawbone found in the ruins of the bunker in Berlin where he committed suicide in 1945,' she said. 'Blaschke, who had the rank of a Major General in the Waffen SS, was shown some records from the Americans who had him in a PoW camp in a bid to confirm that Hitler was dead.' While the Russians, who discovered Hitler's charred corpse along with that of his new bride Eva Braun, could not get their hands on Blaschke, they did find his assistant Kaethe Heusermann. 'Afterwards,' said Deprem-Hennen, 'she vanished for ten years in the Soviet gulag.' Most of Hitler's medical records allegedly burned before Berlin fell in May 1945 when one of the last aircraft to leave the besieged city was shot down. 'But,' said the author, 'many documents remained at Blaschke's practice. Fedor Bruck, a Jewish dentist, who survived the war hidden in Berlin, took over this practice at the end of the war and found them before the Russians woke up to the fact.' Bruck emigrated to America in 1947 taking the details of the Fuehrer's fillings with him. They later passed into the possession of his son Wolfgang who went on to work as a lawyer in the state chancellery in Duesseldorf. Deprem-Hennen said she befriended him as she was working on her dental doctorate after he said: 'I think I have some interesting documents for you.' She said: 'I used them as the basis for my graduation project although the professor of medical history at the university was reluctant to recognise their worth at first, probably thinking back to the falsified Hitler Diaries scandal. But in the end he verified them as genuine.' She worked on the records for six years. 'It was clear that Blaschke was extremely proud of his role as dentist to Hitler, but his patient was not so enthusiastic. 'He said he "dreaded" getting into the dentist's chair. The incident about the root canal that he had to do over eight meetings highlights this phobia he had. 'Also, he suffered more pain following the assassination attempt in July 1944 when he was hit with splinters in the face.' Blaschke noted he had a bridge on the right side of his mouth which he complained had 'moved and someone had better put it back pretty damned quick.' Blaschke also said he suffered terribly from bad breath, abscesses and gum disease and he put 10 fillings into his mouth in 1944 alone. The head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, was also treated by the 'Devil's Dentist' He noted that much of what caused him pain in later life was probably due to his poor diet as a down-and-out on the streets of pre-WW1 Vienna where Hitler lived like a tramp. Hermann Goering, the bombastic Nazi Luftwaffe chief who invented the dreaded Gestapo in 1934, was such a coward that Blaschke noted; 'He cried before he even got in the chair. 'Prosthetics had to be made for him, and ready, on the same day because he "could not run around as the head of the Luftwaffe with missing teeth".' Hitler was known in his inner circle as being squeamish when it came to his teeth. His interpreter, Paul Schmidt, said that Hitler was once so frustrated after talks with Spain's General Franco failed to bring him into the war that he told his Italian ally Benito Mussolini: 'I would rather have two or three teeth out than go through that again!' Deprem-Hennen notes in her book that while Blaschke, who died in 1957, was a die-hard Nazi who knew 'where all the gold from extermination camp victims had come from to be used in fillings for SS men,' he was not incapable of showing kindness. 'He used to carry the paralysed Jewish landlord of the mansion where he lived into the bomb shelter when the Allied planes were overhead,' she said.